The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka in 1915. It tells the story of Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who wakes up one morning to find that he has transformed into a giant insect. The story follows his struggle to come to terms with his new form and his family's reaction to his transformation.

Chapter One

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He lay on his hard, armor-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His numerous legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only a little too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Over the table on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was spread out - Samsa was a traveling salesman - hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had disappeared.

Gregor's eyes then turned to the window. The dull weather - he could hear raindrops striking against the metal window panes - seemed to make him quite melancholy. "Why don't I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this nonsense," he thought. But this was entirely impractical since he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he could not turn himself over. However hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled back onto his back. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the wriggling legs, and gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side which he had never felt before.

Chapter Two

It was not until late in the afternoon that Gregor awoke from his deep and coma-like sleep. He would have woken up naturally much earlier, but he had slept so deeply that he had not heard any of the usual noises of the morning; the creaking of the door, the postman's footsteps, the murmuring of the family in the next room. It was only when the clock struck three that his sister came in and softly called to him: "Gregor? Gregor?" At the other side of the door, his mother cried: "Let me in, Gregor. I have something for you."

But Gregor did not want to open the door, he did not want to see his family, and he did not want to hear what they had to say. He just wanted to lie in bed and think about his condition. He knew that his life as a traveling salesman was over, that he would never be able to leave the house again in his present state. He wondered what his family would do now that they were dependent on his father's meager income. He knew that they would blame him for their misfortune, even though he had no control over what had happened to him.

Chapter Three

Days passed, and Gregor's condition worsened. His body became covered in dust and cobwebs, and he could no longer eat the food that his sister brought him. He began to lose hope and resign himself to his fate. One day, he overheard his father talking to the tenants who lived.